The Center has been dedicated to promoting exemplary teaching and scholarship in Israeli Studies since 2007. As a scholar of American Jewish history, modern Judaism, and Israel studies, and chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History, Sarna brings distinguished experience and knowledge to the Center’s mission of advancing knowledge and understanding of the modern state of Israel through training of scholars and teachers, and supporting research, publications, and conferences.

In celebration of the Center’s decade of groundbreaking work, enjoy a special issue of Israel Studies on us - download “Zionism in the 21st Century”for free from JSTOR today.

March 29, 2018

I never set out to be a photographer of conflict and tragedy—famines in Bangladesh and Ethiopia and wars on five continents at last count. In my early twenties, I saw enough blood, heard enough lies from military and civilian officials, and lost close friends while serving as an officer in the United States Army in Vietnam. Back home and finishing graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971, I turned down a desk job in Saigon, capital of the former South Vietnam, as a picture editor with the Associated Press, the world’s largest news gathering agency. To my mind, if I was to ever again experience the constant fear of being killed, at least it would be looking through the lens of my Nikon cameras.

My work for National Geographic Magazine in places like Cambodia, where I was wounded in 1974, and in embattled corners from the world— the Middle East, Afghanistan, South Asia, Northern Ireland, and El Salvador—was often part of reporting larger global issues. For example, genocidal Khmer Rouge guerrillas fired rockets and mortars at innocent Cambodians receiving American food aid and I was in the middle of the mayhem, following a shipment of California rice for a story about the world hunger crisis. Fifty years on, we forget that Cambodia by 1974 was starving as the war in neighboring Vietnam spilled across its border, creating tens of thousands of refugees.

In another instance, I traveled the globe with the International Committee of the Red Cross, keepers of the Geneva Conventions, to document its humanitarian world in some 14 war zones. In El Salvador, about to return home after two weeks in the middle of the most violent conflict in the Western Hemisphere during the 1980s, the ICRC chief asked if I wanted to accompany doctors and nurses on a mission into the contested jungle to bring out a wounded Communist guerrilla fighter to a government hospital. She had a bullet in her brain. No one at National Geographic would have ever known if I had turned down this invitation of uncertain promise of more or better pictures. But it was my job. As it was, our convoy of Red Cross vehicles was fired upon by a Salvadorian or American helicopter, held up at rebel checkpoints, and twice forded a river seeded with mines.

That phrase—“it’s my job”—has been a constant beacon as I have looked at the dying in International Red Cross hospitals in Ethiopia in 1985 or at hundreds of children in Vietnam, born with heart-wrenching deformities as the result of residual dioxin in the environment—the active ingredient of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange that we Americans sprayed to deny Communist soldiers their jungle sanctuaries. In these and many other cases, it was my job, or calling, to take an unblinking look at the world’s heartaches. Or as I tell students, to be society’s professional eyewitness.

The author flying in a US Air Force F-16 fighter jet.

That drive to be a faithful eyewitness to some of the world’s headlines did not come naturally for a young man from a small town in Wisconsin. My first mentor, the late University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Wilmott Ragsdale—himself a former war correspondent—used to tell students, “Be bold and move toward the action.” In those days, the “action” was often violent anti-Vietnam War protests on the streets of Madison, but the lesson stuck. As I learned more about the great photojournalists of the twentieth century, another name stuck with me—Robert Capa. A Hungarian Jew born Endre Friedmann who took the nom de guerre Robert Capa, he moved from conflict to conflict—from Spain and China to North Africa and through Western Europe—until his beloved Paris was liberated from the Nazis. As I recount in Somewhere West of Lonely, Capa landed in the surf of Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, with the first assault troops of the US First and Twenty-Ninth Infantry Divisions, which would suffer nearly four thousand casualties that fateful morning. Capa’s name and reputation for courage live on, in part through his famous aphorism that I have silently repeated to myself in some of the most difficult situations of my professional life: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

I tell students that the best foreign correspondents have a low threshold for injustice. It has been my privilege to work with a few and meet many. In Vietnam, Gloria Emerson of the New York Times wrote with what her newspaper called an “angry dignity.” She once nailed a general who asked subordinates to write him up for awards of valor for a battle that never happened. The author Frances FitzGerald reported the war first-hand for The Atlantic and the New Republic, then wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning history, Fire in the Lake, after researching modern Indochina in four languages. From both women, I learned to never, ever trust the government’s version of events without seeing things for yourself.

In my experience, it is not the pay or the awards that motivate war correspondents, but a sense of moral outrage at the obscenities of our times. I dedicated Somewhere West of Lonely to friends and colleagues to have been killed telling the stories of the world, including wars. These men and women accepted the risks “to help citizens be free and self-governing,” in the words of journalism textbook authors Tom Rosensteil and Bill Kovach. And to my mind, those few eloquent words summarize what our work should be about—to help citizens be free and self-governing.

Steve Raymer is a former National Geographic photojournalist who has captured it all through the lens of his camera. The National Press Photographers Association and the University of Missouri named him Magazine Photographer of the Year—one of photojournalism’s most coveted awards—for his reporting on the global hunger crisis. He has also been honored by the Overseas Press Club of America for international reporting requiring exceptional courage and is the winner of numerous first-place awards from the National Press Photographers Association and the White House News Photographers Association. His books include Redeeming Calcutta: A Portrait of India’s Imperial Capital. His new book, Somewhere West of Lonely, will be available in April.

March 28, 2018

This post is part of a series that takes a closer look at the scholarship behind IU Press Journals. Primarily written by journal editors and contributors, posts may respond to articles, provide background, document the development process, or explain why scholars are excited about the journal, theme, or article.

In a world of an increasing influence of economy on life in general, practices of music education should recollect their primary sense which—above all—realizes in recollection by means of musical-aesthetical practices. The enhancement of these practices is the goal of practices of music education whose amelioration is the goal of research in music pedagogy. In this web of relationships “disciplinary identity” is at stake.

In order to strengthen this identity, a “disciplinary matrix” (Th. S. Kuhn) of scientific music pedagogy is established on the basis of reflection theory, founded by a four-dimensional sign. Its dimensions “constitution of an object,” “individual,” “interaction,” and “modification of sense” are constitutive of each other. It is used as a basis for the reconstruction of musical practices, practices of music education, interdisciplinary practices and research practices of music pedagogy. Reconstruction can also reveal neglected aspects and research gaps.

This systemic approach generates limits which become apparent by Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of the nonidentical. The meanings of this concept can be reconstructed in the aforementioned sense, as well as the categories Critical Theory applies for the description of societal practices: reification, alienation, totally administered society/culture industry and instrumental reason/context of delusion. In their negativity, these categories are particular and therefore not apt as principles of a holistic system. They represent a realization within this system built on the basis of reflection theory.

The article focusses not only on the relationship between the holistic system and its challenging by the nonidentical, but also thematizes several consequences of this relationship for practices of music education: “Disciplinary identity” should be regarded as a topic not only of science but of practitioners as well. This is why the reading public of this article should reach from students of music pedagogy through practitioners of music education to researchers.

Stefan Orgass is a professor of Music Education and Music Didactics at Folkwang University of Art. From 2010 to 2016 he was the first chairman of the Federal Association for Music Education, and since 2011 has been a member of the advisory board for the European Music Exchange of the German Music Council. His research interests include development of the didactic conception ‘Communicative Music Didactics’; basic questions of music education, theory of musical importance, and research on teaching and science theory of music education.

March 27, 2018

To celebrate National Poetry Month, we're giving away a signed copy of 'Girl with Death Mask' by prize-winning poet Jennifer Givhan!

"Givhan crafts a clear-eyed narrative of Latina womanhood in this lovely collection ripe with longing, hope, and broken faith. . . . She explores the dark sides of adolescence and womanhood with searing imagery and a healthy dose of empathy." —Publishers Weekly

“These poems beautifully, convincingly do what I hope poems might–they disrupt what I know, or what I thought I knew. And in that way they invent for me a world. A world haunted and brutal, yes. But one mended, too, by the love and tenderness and vision and magic by which these poems are made.” —Ross Gay, author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

Love, tequila, sex, first periods, late nights, abuse, and heartache. The journey from girl to womanhood is brimming with transformative magic that heals even as it shatters. These are the memories that haunt the dreams of what was and what could have been in Girl with Death Mask.

In four rich and imaginative movements of poems, Jennifer Givhan profiles the suffering and the love of a Latina girl and then mother coming to terms with sexual trauma. Her daughter is a touchstone of healing as she seeks to unravel her own emotions and protect the next generation of women with a fierceness she must find within. Givhan exploits changing poetic forms to expose what it means to mature in a female body swirling with tenderness, violence, and potential in an uncertain world. Girl with Death Mask is a cathartic and gripping confession of the trials of adolescence and womanhood.

The giveaway will be open until April 13th. Can't wait? Learn more about the book, or order your copy wherever books are sold!

March 15, 2018

In their new book, Quilts and Health, Marsha MacDowell, Clare Luz, and Beth Donaldson explore the healing power of quilts and quiltmaking and the deep connections between art and health. From Alzheimer’s to Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Lou Gehrig's Disease to Crigler-Najjar Syndrome, and for nearly every form of cancer, millions of quilts have been made in support of personal well-being, health education, patient advocacy, memorialization of victims, and fundraising. Quilts and Health brings together over one hundred health-related quilts—with imagery from abstract patterns to depictions of fibromyalgia to an ovarian cancer diary—and the stories behind the art, as told by makers, recipients, healthcare professionals, and many others.

To celebrate Worldwide Quilting Day, we’re sharing a few of our favorite quilts from this gorgeous book.

Fighting Breast Cancer, One Breast at a Time, Marie, Clarice, and Lucille (last names not identified), Lansing, Michigan, 2010. 38.5" × 51.5". Collection of the Michigan State University Women’s Imaging Center. Photo by Marsha MacDowell, February 2016.

March 08, 2018

Hey! I’m Annette Cotant and I’m a sophomore from Fort Wayne, Indiana, majoring in English with a concentration in Public and Professional Writing and a minor in Classics. I’m interning at IU Press in Acquisitions for both the spring and summer semesters of 2018. I have two other jobs, one at Sugar and Spice in the Indiana Memorial Union and another training to be a tutor at Writing Tutorial Services.

I love reading and writing, and I’m looking forward to entering the publishing field after college – unless I decide to continue my education in grad school and potentially become a professor. I collect leather-bound classic literature and my dream is to own a first edition. My favorite author is Edgar Allan Poe and I’m hoping to adopt my first pet cat in the summer (naturally, I will name him Poe). Other than my nerdy hobbies, I enjoy listening to punk rock music, watching YouTube videos, and sleeping.

In honor of Women’s History Month, enjoy some of our journals’ most recent contributions to the exploration of women’s issues across wide-ranging subject areas!

Black Camera is a journal of black film studies, edited at the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University-Bloomington, and engenders an academic discussion of black film production, including historical and contemporary book and film reviews, interviews with accomplished film professionals, and editorials on the development of black creative culture.

This essay explores the contributions of Beyoncé to what I call “the New Niggerati,” a cadre of Black cultural producers engineering American popular culture. Their promotion of individual economic improvement is a discursive shift in Black music, a “dap” to advanced capitalism. Beyoncé's hegemonic power to move the culture places her at the apex of the New Niggerati. With the simultaneity of her privilege and a perceived Black southern realism, she represents a new frontier for Black feminist cultural studies. I examine a selection of her work to demonstrate the complicated nature of her manipulations of protest iconography within an apparatus of capital designed to suppress revolutionary consciousness. Beyoncé's fetishized Black feminist radicalism has transformed the politics of social movements into a set of commodities that ultimately sustain her personal empire.

Published continuously since 1905, the Indiana Magazine of History is one of the nation's oldest historical journals. Since 1913, the IMH has been edited and published quarterly at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Finding payroll records containing the names of hundreds of nineteenth century women wage-earners. Opening a fascinating women’s manuscript collection that no one has researched. Reading a book about a woman in another state and wondering if any Indiana woman had the same experience. Running into a student or colleague and bemoaning the fact that women’s historians in Indiana never meet to discuss their findings. All of this, and more, led to the January 14, 2014, meeting at which Marcia Caudell of the Indiana State Library, Nancy Conner of Indiana Humanities, Dani Pfaff of the Indiana Historical Bureau, Jeannie Regan-Dinius of the Indiana Women’s History Association and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and Elizabeth Osborne of the Indiana State Supreme Court set in motion the first conference devoted strictly to the history of Indiana women.

The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion is a channel for the publication of feminist scholarship in religion and a forum for discussion among people of differing feminist perspectives and analysis in the service of the transformation of religious studies as a discipline and the feminist transformation of religious and cultural institutions.

Jan Willis is professor emerita of religion at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and visiting professor of religion at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She is author of The Diamond Light: An Introduction to Tibetan Buddhist Meditation (1972), On Knowing Reality: The Tattvartha Chapter of Asanga’s Bodhisattvabhumi (1979), and Enlightened BeingsL Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition (1995); and editor of Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet (1989).

There will be a time, in most of the world, when the last well goes dry. And this is because so much of the world lives already on the brink of a dreadful thirst, a life only made tolerable because women travel great distances to find the wells or the rivers or the ditches, scoop up the water, and bring it home. They carry it on their backs, or their heads, or on their hips, like a child. In Africa alone, women walk forty billion hours a year to bring this water home.

Meridians provides a forum for the finest scholarship and creative work by and about women of color in U.S. and international contexts and recognizes that feminism, race, transnationalism, and women of color are contested terms and engages in a dialogue across ethnic and national boundaries.

Over the past few years, right-wing political groups in France have made sexuality a focus of their concerns. Since the debate about political lesbianism in 1980, feminist research on sexuality in France has been markedly limited to research on abortion, contraception, and sexual violence. In this article, I look back at the US feminist “sex wars” as a crucial turning point in feminist thought on sexuality and examine different aspects feminists address when speaking about sexuality. I argue that the multiplicity of levels of thinking sex brought up by US feminists opposes a structural- and an individual-based perspective. These multiple levels crosscut on the topics of sexual practices, identities, and morals, the very themes of the sex wars. Together they compose the technology of power (Foucault 1976) that has been constructed under the name of sexuality in the nineteenth century. The contributions of the US feminist debate on sexuality help to broaden an understanding of sexuality in today's politics in France. But in taking a closer look at the US feminist sex wars, it appears that they actually coincide with the US construction of French feminism and French theory. The trajectories of Monique Wittig's and Michel Foucault's works provide examples of the productivity of translations. They also stand for different feminist strategies of thinking sex that after a closer examination do not seem so radically opposed any more. Through this analysis the deconstruction of sexuality as an entity is suggested in re-embracing the critical questions set by the authors of the sex wars.

Kidushin—betrothal—the central legal act that creates a binding relationship between a Jewish man and a Jewish woman, is ritually and legally a unilateral act, performed by the male participant, and the inequity of Jewish divorce law (the get process) is a function and mirror of this imbalance. In this article, I will consider and provide a halakhic analysis of the following questions: Can kidushin be reformed to become an egalitarian, or more egalitarian, process? Could we, from within the current halakhic structure, address and change the unilateral nature of kidushin and its undoing—divorce? If that is not possible, could Jewish law provide for, or at least accommodate, alternative means of marriage and divorce that sidestep kidushin? If so, what mechanisms might we find within the traditional legal sources for structuring an egalitarian marital commitment between two persons and for undoing such a commitment? What kind of ceremony would create such a commitment, and how would such marriage be terminated? I will survey a number of proposals, encountered in my research or through personal connections, that I believe offer plausible alternatives to kidushin and get, from both a legal and a ritual point of view.

Transition is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling ideas from and about the black world. Since its founding in Uganda in 1961, the magazine has kept apace of the rapid transformation of the African Diaspora and has remained a leading forum of intellectual debate. Transition is a publication of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, edited by Alejandro de la Fuente.

March 05, 2018

This post is part of a series that takes a closer look at the scholarship behind IU Press Journals. Primarily written by journal editors and contributors, posts may respond to articles, provide background, document the development process, or explain why scholars are excited about the journal, theme, or article.

As a public school elementary and middle school music teacher, I worked to engage issues of social justice in my classroom. Because I did not have a car, I lacked the ability to engage in professional development with other music teachers and felt relatively isolated as the only music teacher in my school. As such, I wondered how other music teachers took up social justice work in their classrooms.

Compelled by this question, in my doctoral work, I made my own professional development. I had the privilege of sitting in the classrooms of four exceptional teachers who purposefully engaged in anti-racist and social justice work in their classrooms. Their students performed, wrote, listened to, and improvised music. Teachers also guided students to grapple meaningfully with the sociohistorical and sociopolitical contexts of all music studied. They learned a wide range of music across multiple styles, cultures, and geographies. All four teachers limited their use of Western standard notation, preferring to offer some notational literacy as a “key to the door” alongside constant aural learning.

I observed in each classroom two days a week for an eight-week period. I found the teachers’ pedagogy impressive and watched as the students wrestled with privilege and asked and responded to hard questions about context. As I observed, I began to wonder if there were limits on who could engage in critical pedagogy in the classroom. All four teachers were white women and they faced little resistance in work that one could easily consider as radical. Would people of color implementing similar pedagogy face greater resistance or be perceived as “having an agenda”? I also wondered whether there were any “casualties” of engaging in critical pedagogy in the classroom. Would the students who only received an introduction to notation, for example, be limited later in their choices for continuing in music based on this earlier anti-racist focus? I wrote this article to engage with these issues and to explore what I refer to as the paradoxes and casualties of critical pedagogy.

Juliet Hess is an assistant professor of music education at Michigan State University’s College of Music. Her research interests include anti-oppression education, activism in music and music education, music education for social justice, and the question of ethics in world music study.